Language play

Language play is the deliberate, creative violation or playing-upon of linguistic norms, meanings and forms for the sake of a comic, aesthetic or intellectual effect. Language play rests on the use of polysemy, homonymy, paronymy, sound coincidences, unexpected word-formation, the destruction of phraseological units and other resources of language that activate attention to the linguistic material itself. It is characteristic of the pun, the witticism, the riddle, children's creativity, and especially of literature oriented toward experiment and irony, in particular the avant-garde and Postmodernism. Language play reveals the flexibility, polysemy and creative potential of language, transforming it from a transparent means of communication into an object of aesthetic attention. It is an important category of stylistics, linguopoetics and the theory of the comic, closely linked to the playful nature of artistic creativity.